End of the Spear

Based on real-life events, End of the Spear recounts the story of the brutal slayings of American missionaries in the Amazon rainforest during the mid-1950s at the hands of the warlike Waodani tribe, who subsequently changed their ways after the missionaries' surviving family members came to live among them. The film opens by introducing five American missionaries and their families—including Nate Saint (Chad Allen)—who have relocated to Ecuador to establish contact with the near-extinct Waodani (then known as the Auca). Resisting the newcomers' influence, Auca tribesman Mincayani (Louie Leonardo) persuades his fellow tribesmen that the foreigners have abducted and eaten a member of the tribe, Dayumae (Christina Souza), and incites them to spear the five Americans to death. But Dayumae, who has only run away from the Auca, returns to the tribe and brings along one missionary's wife and another's sister, as well as Saint's young son, Steve. Living with the natives under Dayumae's protection, the Americans attempt to break the cycle of violence. Director Jim Hanon, who also helmed Beyond the Gates of Splendor—a 2005 feature-length documentary on the same subject, reviewed in VL Online-2/06—occasionally loses his way here as the story's point of view repeatedly shifts from the Waodanis to the Americans, while voiceover supplied by the fully-grown Steve Saint years after the fact is alternately confusing and unnecessary. Still, the overall narrative compels viewer attention, and Hanon's limning of the Waodani lifestyle is fascinating. Recommended. (E. Hulse)